Ceph is one of the most interesting new technologies to recently emerge in the Linux storage space. Based on the RADOS object store, the Ceph stack boasts massive scalability and high availability commercial, off-the shelf hardware and free and open source software. Ceph includes a massively distributed filesystem (Ceph FS), a striped, replicated, highly available block device (RBD), S3 and Swift object storage capability through the RESTful RADOS Gateway, and a simple, well-documented native API with language bindings for C, C++ and Python.

This BoF is a walk through typical deployment scenarios, and the initial setup of a Ceph cluster. We’ll discuss Ceph’s most important features and identify current shortcomings, discuss performance considerations, and identify common Ceph failure modes and recovery.

Good Linux sysadmin/devops background recommended for attendees. Distributed storage knowledge is a plus.